Twilight
by Robert Downey Jr94
Summary: Kiara is a young lioness with a not to bright life. But she soon gets caught in a romance with Kovu, after finding out his family's sercet. Kiara get thrown into new kind of world. As she is now being hunting by a blood lust lion of her dear Kovu's kind. Will Kiara be able to live though this horror and be with her true love? Bascaily Lion King Version of Twilight! Please Read!
1. Preface

**Author's Note: So I been working on this for some time. I hope you like it!**

_I'd never given much thought to how I would die though I'd had reason enough in the last few months-but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this. I stared without breathing across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and he looked pleasantly back at me. Surely it was a good way to die in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something. I knew that if I'd never gone to the PrideLands, I wouldn't be facing death now. But, terrified as I was, I couldn't bring myself to regret the decision. When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end. The hunter smiled in a friendly way as he sauntered forward to kill me._

**Author's Note: Well that's the preface! What did you think?**


	2. First Sight

**Author's Note: Thanks for the review, CSIMentalistTLK lover. I'm glad you like it, ok I changed Folks to Pridelands. Also I don't own anything but a few OCs. Maybe. Also some charters from the book will have their book names. Now to the story, enjoy! **

My mother walked me to the border. The sky a perfect, cloudless blue. My golden fur glistened under the rays of the sun of osisis.

In the Olympic area up west is a small land named the Pridelands exists under a near-constant cover of clouds. It rains on this inconsequential town more than any other place in Africa.

It was from this small place and its gloomy, omnipresent shade that my mother escaped with me when I was only a few months old.

It was in this land that I'd been compelled to spend a month every summer until I was fourteen. That was the year I finally put my paw down; these past three summers, my dad, Simba,

vacationed with me in the osisis for two weeks instead. It was to the Pridelands that I now exiled myself - an action that I took with great horror. I detested the PrideLands.

I loved the osisis. I loved the sun and the blistering heat. I loved the vigorous, sprawling area.

"Kiara," my mom said to me - the last of a thousand times - before we got on the border. "You don't have to do this."

My mom looks like me, except with cream fur, bright blue eyes and laugh lines. I felt a spasm of panic as I stared at her wide, childlike eyes. How could I ever leave my loving, erratic, harebrained mother to fend for herself? Of course she had Ni now, so there would be food and some to look after her but still. . .

"I want to go," I lied. I'd always been a bad liar, but I'd been saying this lie so frequently lately that it sounded almost convincing now.

"Tell Simba I said hi."

"I will."

"I'll see you soon," she insisted. "You can come home whenever you want -I'll come right back as soon as you need me."

But I could see the sacrifice in her eyes behind the promise.

"Don't worry about me," I urged. "It'll be great. I love you mom."

She hugged me tightly for a minute, and then I headed over the dessert toward the Pridelands, and she was gone.

It's a four hour walk from the dessert to the Grasslands, another hour walk towards the Pridelands. The walking doesn't bother me; the hour with Simba, though, I was a little worried about.

Simba had really been fairly nice about the whole thing. He seemed genuinely pleased that I was coming to live with him for the first time with any degree of permanence. He'd already gotten me registered for high school. But it was sure to be awkward with Simba. Neither of us was what anyone would call verbose, and I didn't know what there was to say regardless. I knew he was more than a little confused by my decision - like my mother before me, I hadn't made a secret of my distaste for the Pridelands.

When I got to the Grasslands, it was raining. I didn't see it as an omen -just unavoidable. I'd already said my goodbyes to the sun.

Simba was waiting for me by the border. This I was expecting, too. Simba gave me an awkward, one - armed hug when I stumbled my way towards him.

"It's good to see you, Kiara," he said, smiling as he automatically caught and steadied me. "You haven't changed much. How's Nala?"

"Mom's fine It's good to see you, too, Dad." I wasn't allowed to call him Simba to his face.

"Do you remember Ahadi down at La Push?" La Push is the tiny reservation on the coast.

"No."

"He used to go fishing with us during the summer," Simba prompted.

That would explain why I didn't remember him. I do a good job of blocking painful unnecessary things from my memory. But no need to add that my being happy in the Pridelands is an impossibility. He didn't need to suffer along with me.

We exchanged a few more comments on the weather, which was wet, and that was pretty much it for the conversation. We stared out infront of us in silence. It was beautiful, of course; I couldn't deny that. Everything was green: the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves.

It was too green - an alien planet.

Eventually we made it to Simba's. He still lived in the small, two-room cave that he'd found with my mother in the early days of their marriage. Those were the only kind of days their marriage had - the early ones.

I got the west bedroom that faced out over the yard. The room was familiar; it had belonged to me since I was born. The cold floor, the light coming from the ceiling these were all a part of my childhood.

One of the best things about Simba is he doesn't hover. He left me alone to get settled, a fear that would have been altogether impossible for my mother. It was nice to be alone, not to have to smile and look pleased; a relief to stare dejectedly out the opening in my wall at the sheeting rain and let just a few tears escape.

I wasn't in the mood to go on a real crying jag. I would save that for bedtime, when I would have to think about the coming morning.

Pridelands High School had a frightening total of only three hundred and fifty-seven - now fifty-eight - students; there were more than seven hundred animals in my junior class alone back home. All the kids here had grown up together - their grandparents had been cubs together.

I would be the new girl a curiosity, a freak.

Maybe, if I looked like a girl from an osisis should, I could work this to my advantage. But physically, I'd never fit in anywhere. I should be tan, sporty, blond - all the things that go with living in the valley of the sun.

Instead, I was bright golden fured, without even the excuse of blue eyes, despite the constant sunshine. I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete;

I didn't have the necessary paw-eye coordination to play sports without humiliating myself and anyone else who stood to close.

I went to a nearby pond to clean myself up after the day of travel. I looked at my face in the mirror as I used my black claws to comb through my tangled, damp fur. Maybe it was the light, but I already looked sallower, unhealthy. My coat could be pretty - it was very clean.

Facing my pallid reflection in the water, I was forced to admit that I was lying to myself. It wasn't just physically that I'd never fit in. And if I couldn't find a niche in a school with three thousand, what were my chances here?

I didn't relate well to animals my age. Maybe the truth was that I didn't relate to animals, period. Even my mother, who I was closer to than anyone else on the planet, was never in harmony with me, never on exactly the same page.

Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs. Maybe there was a glitch in my brain. But the cause didn't matter. All that mattered was the effect. And tomorrow would be just the beginning.

I didn't sleep well that night, even after I was done crying. The constant whooshing of the rain and the wind across the roof wouldn't fade into the background. But I couldn't fall asleep until after midnight, when the rain finally settled into a quieter drizzle.

Thick fog was all I could see out my wall opening in the morning, and I could feel the claustrophobia creeping up on me. You could never see the sky here; it was like a cage.

Breakfast with Simba was a quiet event. He wished me good luck at school. I thanked him, knowing his hope was wasted. Good luck tended to avoid me.

Simba left first, off to work that was his wife and family. It was impossible, being in this cave, not to realize that Simba had never gotten over my mom. It made me uncomfortable. I didn't want to be too early to school, but couldn't stay in the cave anymore. So I headed out into the rain.

It was just drizzling still, not enough to soak me through immediately. Finding the school wasn't difficult, though I'd never been there before. There were so many trees and shrubs I couldn't see it's size at first. Where was the feel of the institution? I wondered nostalgically. sucked in a huge breath. I can do this, I lied to myself feebly.

No one was going to bite me.

I felt my breathing gradually creeping toward hyperventilation as I approached an opening. I tried holding my breath as I followed two zebras through the opening. The room was small. There were two lionesses, one a porcelain-colored blonde, the other pale, with light brown tail tuff.

I went up to the teacher, an antelope Mr. Mason. He gawked at me -an encouraging response — and of course I flushed tomato red.

But at least he sent me to the back without introducing me to the class. It was harder for my new classmates to stare at me in the back, but somehow, they managed.

I kept my eyes down on the reading list the teacher had given me. It was fairly basic, I'd already read everything. That was comforting… and boring.

I wondered if my mom would send my old work, or if she would think that was cheating. I went through different arguments with her in my head while the teacher droned on.

When a trumpet rang, a nasal buzzing sound, a gangly teen lion with fur problems and a mane black as my claws leaned across to talk to me.

"You're Kiara, aren't you?" He looked like the overly helpful type.

I just nodded and kept on walking.

"Where's your next class?" he asked.

"Um, Government, with Jefferson, in cave six"

There was nowhere to look without meeting curious eyes.

"I'm headed toward cave four, I could show you the way…" Definitely over-helpful.

"I'm Eric," he added.

I smiled tentatively. "Thanks."

As we headed out into the rain, I could have sworn several animals behind us were walking close enough to eavesdrop. I hoped I wasn't getting paranoid.

"So, this is a lot different than the osisis, huh?" he asked.

"Very."

"It doesn't rain much there, does it?"

"Three or four times a year."

"Wow, what must that be like?" he wondered.

"Sunny," I told him.

"You don't look very tan."

"My mother is part albino."

He studied my face apprehensively, and I sighed. It looked like clouds and a sense of humor didn't mix.

A few months of this and I'd forget how to use sarcasm. We walked around the feeding area, to the south caves by the training flieds. Eric walked me right to an opening, though it was clearly marked.

"Well, good luck," he said, "Maybe we'll have some other classes together." He sounded hopeful. I smiled at him vaguely and went inside.

The rest of the morning passed in about the same fashion. My history teacher, Mr. Varner, who I would have hated anyway just because of the subject he taught, was the only one who made me stand in front of the class and introduce myself.

I stammered, blushed, and tripped over my own paws on the way to my spot.

After two classes, I started to recognize several of the faces in each class. There was always someone braver than the others who would introduce themselves and ask me questions about how I was liking the Pridelands. I tried to be diplomatic, but mostly I just lied a lot.

One lioness sat next to me in history. She walked with me to the feeding area for lunch. She light brown fur and a dark brown tail tuff.

I couldn't remember her name, so I smiled and nodded as she prattled about teachers and classes. I didn't try to keep up.

We sat with several of her friends, who she introduced to me. I forgot all their names as soon as she spoke them. They seemed impressed by her bravery in speaking to me. Eric, smiled at me from across the flied.

It was there, sitting in the feeding area, trying to make conversation with seven curious strangers, that I first saw them. They were sitting in the corner of the flied, as far away from where I sat as possible. There were five of them. They weren't talking, and they weren't eating, though they each had untouched food in front of them. They weren't gawking at me, unlike most of the other students, so it was safe to stare at them without fear of meeting an excessively interested pair of eyes. But it was none of these things that caught, and held, my attention.

They didn't look anything alike. Of the three lions, one was big — muscled with dark reddish brown mane.

Another was taller, leaner, but still muscular, and had a honey blond mane.

The last was less bulky, with untidy, muddy brown mane. He was more boyish than the others, who looked like they could be in college, or even teachers here rather than students.

The lionesses were opposites. The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on her self-esteem just by being in the same room. Her tail tuff was golden.

The short lioness was pixie like, thin in the extreme, with small features. Her tail tuff was a deep black and pointing in every direction.

And yet, they were all exactly alike. Every one of them was chalky pale, the palest of all the students living in this sunless town. Paler than me, the albino. They all had very dark eyes.

They also had dark shadows under those eyes — purplish, bruise like shadows. As if they were all suffering from a sleepless night,or almost done recovering from a broken nose. Though their noses, all their features, were straight, perfect, angular.

But all this is not why I couldn't look away.

I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, un animal beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except as the face of an angel. It was hard to decide who was the most beautiful — maybe the perfect lioness, or the muddy mane lion.

They were all looking away — away from each other, away from the other students, away from anything in particular as far as I could tell. As I watched, the small lioness rose and walked away with a quick, graceful lope that belonged to another kind of animal. I watched, amazed at her lithe dancer's step, till she glided through the back opening, faster than I would have thought possible.

My eyes darted back to the others, who sat or laid unchanging.

"Who are they?" I asked the lioness whose name I'd forgotten.

As she looked up to see who I meant — though already knowing, probably, from my tone — suddenly he looked at her, the thinner one, the boyish one, the youngest, perhaps.

He looked at my neighbor for just a fraction of a second, and then his dark eyes flickered to mine.

He looked away quickly, more quickly than I could, though in a flush of embarrassment I dropped my eyes at once. In that brief flash of a glance, his face held nothing of interest — it was as if she had called his name, and he'd looked up in involuntary response, already having decided not to answer.

My neighbor giggled in embarrassment, looking at them like I did.

"That's Kovu and Malka, and Tama and Chumvi. The one who left was Kula; they all live together with Dr. Mufasa and his wife." She said this under her breath.

I glanced sideways at the beautiful boy, who was looking at his paws now, his mouth was moving very quickly, his perfect lips barely opening. The other three still looked away, and yet I felt he was speaking quietly to them.

Strange, unpopular names, I thought. The kinds of names grandparents had.

But maybe that was in vogue here — small land names? I finally remembered that my neighbor was called Jessica, a perfectly common name. There were two girls named Jessica in my History class back home.

"They are… very nice-looking." I struggled with the conspicuous understatement.

"Yes!" Jessica agreed with another giggle. "They're all together though — Malka and Tama, and Chumvi and Kula, I mean. And they live together." Her voice held all the shock and condemnation of the small land, I thought critically.

But, if I was being honest, I had to admit that even in the osisis, it would cause gossip.

"Which ones are the who?" I asked. "They don't look related…"

"Oh, they're not. Dr. Mufasa is really young, in his twenties or early thirties. They're all adopted. Chumvi and Tama are brother and sister, twins — the blondes — and they're foster children."

"They look a little old for foster children."

"They are now, Chumvi and Tama are both eighteen, but they've been with Sarabi since they were eight. She's their aunt or something like that."

"That's really kind of nice — for them to take care of all those kids like that, when they're so young and everything."

"I guess so," Jessica admitted reluctantly, and I got the impression that she didn't like the doctor and his wife for some reason. With the glances she was throwing at their adopted children, I would presume the reason was jealousy.

"I think that Sarabi can't have any kids, though," she added, as if that lessened their kindness.

Throughout all this conversation, my eyes flickered again and again to where the strange family sat.

They continued to look at the else where and not eat.

"Have they always lived here?" I asked. Surely I would have noticed them on one of my summers here.

"No," she said in a voice that implied it should be obvious, even to a new arrival like me. "They just moved down two years ago from somewhere."

I felt a surge of pity, and relief.

Pity because, as beautiful as they were, they were outsiders, clearly not accepted. Relief that I wasn't the only newcomer here, and certainly not the most interesting by any standard. As I examined them, the youngest, looked up and met my gaze, this time with evident curiosity in his expression. As I looked swiftly away, it seemed to me that his glance held some kind of unmet expectation.

"Which one is with the muddy brown mane?" I asked. I peeked at him from the corner of my eye, and he was still staring at me, but not gawking like the other students had today — he had a slightly frustrated expression. I looked down again.

"That's Kovu. He's gorgeous, of course, but don't waste your time. He doesn't date. Apparently none of the girls here are good-looking enough for him."

She sniffed, a clear case of sour grapes. I wondered when he'd turned her down.

I bit my lip to hide my smile. Then I glanced at him again. His face was turned away, but I thought his cheek appeared lifted, as if he were smiling, too. After a few more minutes, the four of them left together. They all were noticeably graceful — even the big, brawny one. It was unsettling to watch. The one named Kovu didn't look at me again.

I sat with Jessica and her friends longer than I would have if I'd been sitting alone. I was anxious not to be late for class on my first day. One of my new acquaintances, who considerately reminded me that her name was Angela, had hunting II with me the next hour.

We walked to class together in silence. She was shy, too.

When we entered the room, I recognized Kovu by his unusual mane, sitting next to that single open area. As I walked to introduce myself to the teacher I was watching him surreptitiously. Just as I passed, he suddenly went rigid as he sat. He stared at me again, meeting my eyes with the strangest expression on his face — it was hostile, furious.

I'd noticed that his eyes were black — coal black.

Mr. Banner handed me lessons with no nonsense about introductions. I could tell we were going to get along. Of course, he had no choice but to send me to the one open area in the middle of the room. I kept my eyes down as I went to sit by him, bewildered by the antagonistic stare he'd given me.

I didn't look up but I saw his posture change from the corner of my eye. He was leaning away from me, averting his face like he smelled something bad.

Inconspicuously, I sniffed my fur. It smelled like berries. It seemed an innocent enough odor. I wrapped my tail around me and tried to pay attention to the teacher.

Unfortunately the lecture was on stalking anatomy, something I'd already studied. I took notes carefully anyway, always looking down.

I couldn't stop myself from peeking occasionally at the strange boy next to me. During the whole class, he never relaxed sitting as far from me as possible. I could see his claws were out and digging into the cave floor, tendons standing out under his pale fur. This, too, he never relaxed.

His arms and legs was surprisingly hard and muscular beneath his fur. He wasn't nearly as slight as he'd looked next to his burly brother.

The class seemed to drag on longer than the others. Was it because the day was finally coming to a close, or because I was waiting for his tight fist to loosen? It never did; he continued to sit so still it looked like he wasn't breathing.

What was wrong with him?

Was this his normal behavior? I questioned my judgment on Jessica's bitterness at lunch today. Maybe she was not as resentful as I'd thought. It couldn't have anything to do with me. He didn't know me from Eve.

I peeked up at him one more time, and regretted it. He was glaring down at me again, his black eyes full of revulsion. As I flinched away from him, shrinking, the phrase if looks could kill suddenly ran through my mind.

At that moment, the trumpet rang loudly, making me jump, and Kovu was up. Fluidly he rose — he was much taller than I'd thought — his back to me, and he was out the opening before anyone else was up.

I sat frozen, staring blankly after him. He was so mean.

It wasn't fair. I began trying to block the anger that filled me, for fear my eyes would tear up. For some reason, my temper was hardwired to my tear ducts. I usually cried when I was angry, a humiliating tendency.

"Aren't you Kiara?" a male voice asked.

I looked up to see a cute, baby-faced lion, his pale blond mane carefully gelled into orderly spikes, smiling at me in a friendly way. He obviously didn't think I smelled bad.

"Yes" I said with a smile

"I'm Mike."

"Hi, Mike."

"Do you need any help finding your next class?"

"I'm headed to the training flied, actually. I think I can find it."

"That's my next class, too." He seemed thrilled, though it wasn't that big of a coincidence in a school this small.

We walked to class together; he was a chatterer — he supplied most of the conversation, which made it easy for me. He'd lived in a jungle till he was ten, so he knew how I felt about the sun. It turned out he was in my history class also. He was the nicest lion I'd met today.

But as we were entering the flied, he asked, "So, did you stab Kovu or what? I've never seen him act like that."

I cringed. So I wasn't the only one who had noticed. And, apparently, that wasn't Kovu's usual behavior. I decided to play dumb.

"Was that the lion I sat next to in hunting?" I asked artlessly.

"Yes," he said. "He looked like he was in pain or something."

"I don't know," I responded. "I never spoke to him."

"He's a weird guy."

Mike lingered by me instead of heading toward the males' cave. "If I were lucky enough to sit by you, I would have talked to you."

I smiled at him before walking through the girls' cave. He was friendly and clearly admiring. But it wasn't enough to ease my irritation.

The Pridelands was literally my personal hell on Earth.

I watched four racing games running simultaneously. Remembering how many injuries I had sustained — and inflicted — racing, I felt faintly nauseated.

The final trumpet rang at last. The rain had drifted away, but the wind was strong, and colder. When I walked into a warm cave, I almost turned around and walked back out.

Kovu stood in front of me.

I recognized again that tousled brown mane. He didn't appear to notice the sound of my entrance. I stood pressed against the back wall, waiting for the bird he was talking to, to be free. He was arguing with her in a low, attractive voice. I quickly picked up the gist of the argument. He was trying to trade from sixth-hour hunting to another time — any other time.

I just couldn't believe that this was about me. It had to be something else, something that happened before I entered the hunting room. The look on his face must have been about another aggravation entirely. It was impossible that this stranger could take such a sudden, intense dislike to me.

Cold wind suddenly gusted through the room, rustling up my fur.

Kovu's back stiffened, and he turned slowly to glare at me — his face was absurdly handsome — with piercing, hate-filled eyes. For an instant, I felt a thrill of genuine fear, raising the fur on my arms.

The look only lasted a second, but it chilled me more than the freezing wind. He turned back to the bird.

"Never mind, then," he said hastily in a voice like velvet. "I can see that it's impossible. Thank you so much for your help." And he turned on his heel without another look at me, and disappeared out the cave.

"How did your first day go, dear?" the bird asked maternally.

"Fine," I lied, my voice weak. She didn't look convinced.

When I got outside it seemed like a haven, already the closest thing to home I had in this damp green hole. I sat outside for a while, just staring out blankly. I soon headed back to Simba's, fighting tears the whole way there.

**Author's Note: Well that's the longest chapter I ever did! Please leave a review, thank you!**


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